Will Social Media, Big Data, and “Gamification” Replace the Recruiter?

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Press release from the issuing company

Even as unemployment remains high globally, organizations are finding talent in short supply—and are fiercely competing for it. According to A Brave New World: Recruiting Talent in a Digital Age, a new “playbook” for practitioners in the field, social recruiting has become top-of-mind for human capital leaders and talent management professionals seeking to attract and retain top talent. The report draws from the analysis and first-hand experience of executives from 11 multinational corporations, including Campbell Soup Company, Cisco Systems and Deloitte, convened in a Research Working Group by The Conference Board.

“The days when companies rely on classifieds, job fairs, and employment exchanges are long gone,” said Jonathan Wasserman, Director, Global Talent Management, Campbell Soup Company. “As more ‘digital natives’ enter the workforce, companies that don’t integrate social media into their HR function and don’t adopt a systematic social recruiting strategy will be left behind.”

The report outlines recommendations from successfully using social media to attract, engage and recruit candidates. Among the key findings:

Online candidate engagement means recruiting activities will be increasingly interconnected with PR and communications strategies. As active job-seekers rely more on social connections over traditional search venues, consistent and powerful branding and identity will be as important for candidates as customers.

Gamification—that is, borrowing the point-tracking, achievement levels, and engaged feedback of video games—will become more pervasive as a means to get young employees and other stakeholders more passionately involved with the organization.

Rising alongside creative social recruiting will be a rigorous “workforce science” based on the Big Data potential of platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn. Social media already facilitates communication and information exchange with individual candidates; the future will be aggregating this data into actionable demographic and behavioral insights.

In the evolving model of social recruiting, the role of the recruiter changes dramatically from a salesperson that brings a candidate to a specific job to a brand ambassador and analytics guru.

Organizations are moving toward dividing their recruiter responsibilities into two distinctly different components: One focused on competitive sourcing, to understand the competitive landscape and actively mine for talent; the second focused on business talent acquisition, leveraging their relationship with HR business partners, hiring managers, and vendors.

This report also includes four short embedded videos to allow readers to hear suggested practices directly from talent acquisition professionals.